AirAdvisor's analysis of 68,283 claims against 59 airlines ranks TAP Air Portugal best and TAROM, Aeroitalia and Ryanair worst for paying EU flight-delay compensation.
Passengers delayed in Europe are protected by Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, which entitles them to €250 for flights under 1,500 kilometres delayed by more than two hours, €400 for flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres delayed by more than three hours, and €600 for all other flights delayed by more than four hours. In practice, however, getting an airline to pay can be slow. Travellers may file a claim themselves or use a specialist company such as AirAdvisor, which says it helped submit 68,283 claims against 59 airlines between January and June 2026.
Using that dataset, AirAdvisor ranked airlines by claim resolution rate and by how many rejected or ignored claims ended up in court. According to figures reported by Euronews on 29 October 2026, TAP Air Portugal came first, with an 88.7% resolution rate, a 0.6% court-referral rate and an average payout wait of 10 days. LOT Polish Airlines placed second with an 82.8% success rate and no claims sent to court, and Wizz Air third with 72.4% and 1.2%. Iberia was fourth, Brussels Airlines fifth with no court cases, followed by Air France, Aegean Airlines, KLM, ITA Airways and SAS.
At the bottom of the table, Romania's TAROM resolved just 3.3% of 122 claims, sent 46.7% to court and averaged 110 days to pay. Aeroitalia followed with a 0.6% resolution rate and 28.2% of claims in court, and Ryanair, Europe's largest airline, resolved 2.1% of 991 qualified claims, with 17.8% going to court. These results come only from claims handled through AirAdvisor, so airlines' wider performance may differ, and only the 22 carriers with more than 100 submitted claims were ranked. Travellers should treat the list as one indicator rather than a definitive verdict on how each airline treats its passengers.
